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We were the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA); and were dedicated to ending sexual violence in Jewish communities globally. We did our best to operate as the make a wish foundation for Jewish survivors of sex crimes. In the past we offered a clearinghouse of information, resources, support and advocacy.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Case of Yosef Nunu

Yosef Nunu, a 70-year-old man was convicted and served a lengthy
prison term for murdering his former wife and raping minors was arrested
at the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba after allegedly
molesting a 14-year-old suicidal girl whom he was employed to guard.

Nunu
served 24 years of a life sentence for murdering his wife. He was
released after receiving a presidential pardon. ___________________________________________________________________________________Table of Contents

Man hired by hospital through manpower agency to watch over 14-year-old says he merely kissed her forehead to list her spirits

Herzliya resident Yoseph Nino, 70, who served jail time for murdering
a nurse and raping underage girls, was arrested Thursday on suspicion
of molesting a suicidal 14-year-old girl who was under his observation
at Kfar Saba's Meir Hospital.
The Kfar Saba Magistrate's Court extended his remand by five days.

The girl was admitted to the hospital last week after trying to
commit suicide. The hospital hired Nino through a manpower agency to
watch over her for fear she may try to hurt herself again.
Doctors who walked into the teen's room overnight Friday caught Nino in the act of fondling the girl and called the police.
The suspect has denied the allegations, saying he merely kissed the girl on the forehead to lift her spirits.
During his interrogation, Nino admitted to "massaging" the girl, but said he did not molest her. Meital Yasur Beit-Or contributed to the report

Director of charity that hired man to work as guard questioned on suspicion of employing convicted felon to protect minors.

A 70-year-old man from Herzliya who was convicted and served a lengthy
prison term for murdering his former wife and raping minors was arrested
at the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba on Thursday after allegedly
molesting a 14-year-old suicidal girl whom he was employed to guard.

The
suspect, Yosef Nunu, was hired by the Matav charity to work as a
security guard. The charity’s director was questioned by police under
suspicion of employing a convicted felon to protect minors in violation
of the law.

Nunu served 24 years in prison for murder, molesting
minors, raping young girls, and molesting family members. He was
released after receiving a presidential pardon.

Nunu was tasked with securing a girl who had been hospitalized after attempting to take her own life.

The
incident has caused national outrage, and police have stressed that the
law calls for any agency which employs people who work around children
to ensure that the employee produces a certificate from police stating
that he or she has no previous convictions.

According to
suspicions, Nunu began molesting and touching the girl while she lay in
her hospital bed. He was seen by doctors hovering over the girl. The
doctors became alarmed at his actions and immediately called police.

During
police questioning, Nunu denied the suspicions, saying he merely
“wanted to cheer her up” by giving her “a massage and a kiss to the
forehead.”

The Kfar Saba Magistrate’s Court extended Nunu’s
custody by five days, and described the suspect as a danger to those
around him.

___________________________________________________________________________________Killer, pedophile held for molesting girl he was hired to guardBy Yaakov LappinJerusalem Post - April 30, 2010

A 70-year-old man from Herzliya
who was convicted and served a lengthy prison term for murdering his
former wife and raping minors was arrested at the Meir Medical Center
in Kfar Saba on Thursday after allegedly molesting a 14- year-old
suicidal girl whom he was employed to guard.

The suspect, Yosef
Nunu, was hired by the Matav charity to work as a security guard. The
charity's director was questioned by police under suspicion of
employing a convicted felon…

A 70-year-old man with prior convictions for murder and rape was
arrested yesterday for allegedly molesting a suicidal 14-year-old girl
at Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava a week ago. Later yesterday, the Kfar Sava
Magistrate's Court remanded the suspect, Yosef Nunu of Herzliya, for
five days.

Nunu
had been hired by the hospital through the nursing-care agency Matav to
supervise the girl overnight to prevent her from harming herself.
Police are now investigating why both the hospital and the manpower
agency either overlooked or were unaware of Nunu's criminal record.

Nunu
served 24 years of a life sentence for murdering his wife, and was also
convicted of various sex offenses against underage girls. He was
released after receiving a presidential pardon.

The
suspect was arrested after he was caught fondling the girl in the
hospital's children's ward last Friday night. The incident was reported
to police the next day, but he was arrested only yesterday.

In the intervening days, police said, his agency did not give him any further jobs.

Nunu
has denied the allegations, asserting that the acts were not sexual. He
claimed he merely kissed the girl on the forehead to lift her spirits.

The
agency that hired Nunu employs 17,000 workers and has been operating
for 52 years. Meir Hospital has employed its services for the past 12
years.

The girl, a resident of an Arab town in central Israel, remains under medical supervision at her family's request.

A representative of Meir Hospital said the girl was in reasonable physical condition but in poor emotional health.

"The
hospital maintains contact with companies that offer nursing services
in unusual circumstances," he said. "In this case, personal supervision
was requested from an established nursing agency, one the National
Insurance Institute recently ranked first in the nursing field in terms
of quality and professionalism, a firm that works with many state
bodies.

"On
Friday night, while making the rounds of the children's wing, the ward
manager noticed inappropriate activity occurring with one of the
patients and acted quickly to alert all the relevant authorities - the
police, the welfare authorities and the manpower agency itself. From
that moment, the matter was transferred to the police's jurisdiction.

"The
hospital views the incident very gravely, and will hold a refresher
course on guidelines to be followed by nursing firms," he concluded.

The
Health Ministry does not mandate supervision for psychiatric patients
hospitalized as suicide risks. In recent years, however, hospitals
around the country have developed their own guidelines for such cases,
after incidents in which parents sued hospitals because their
unsupervised children committed suicide there.

"When
a patient has suicidal tendencies and is hospitalized in a place where
he cannot be supervised, it is common for supervisory services to be
employed to prevent the patient from committing suicide," one
psychiatrist noted.

Severe
indictment filed against elderly man with prior convictions for murder
and rape who allegedly sang, gave candy to 14-year-old hospitalized
suicidal teen he was tasked with guarding, before molesting her. Suspect
says wanted to 'lift the girl's spirits'

An indictment was
filed Wednesday against 70-year-old Herzliya resident Yosef Nunu for
molesting a 14-year-old suicidal girl he was watching over at Kfar
Saba's Meir Hospital.

Nunu, who was hired by the hospital through the nursing-care agency
Matav to supervise the teen overnight despite being a convicted murderer
and sex offender, is accused of performing an indecent act while
exploiting a position of supervision and authority.

The girl was admitted to the hospital last week after attempting
suicide. Nunu was hired to watch over her for fear she may harm herself
again.

"He took advantage of the girl's innocence and mental state to satisfy his urges," the indictment read.

According to the charges, filed with the Kfar Saba Magistrates'
Court, last Friday night Nunu carried on a friendly chat with the girl
and her 17-year-old sister in the hospital's children's ward. He even
sang to the suicidal teen, made her laugh and gave her candy.

He then began stroking the girl's arm and forehead, massaged her
hands and feet and kissed her on the check and forehead. The older
sister was witness to Nunu's advances, but a curtain separated the
girl's bed from the beds of the other patients.

At some point Nunu accompanied the suicidal girl to the bathroom
while hugging her, and on the way stroked her face, neck, back and the
area above her sternum. She pushed him away when he tried to touch her
breasts, the indictment said. He managed to touch her stomach underneath
her shirt, and later kissed her lips and the palm of her hand.

The teen later complained to the hospital's nurses about Nunu.

In 1968 Nunu was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a
nurse in his cab after she had resisted his advances. He eventually
served 13 years for the crime.

In 1993 he was convicted of assault, and in 1998 he was
convicted of sexually assaulting an underage girl, for which he was
sentenced to four months community service.

In
2000 Nunu was convicted of sexually assaulting an underage boy and
performing a lewd act in front of a minor. He was sentenced to six years
in prison for these crimes.

The prosecution asked that Nunu remain in custody until the
conclusion of legal proceedings, claiming he poses a danger to the
public. The prosecution will present the testimonies of the two sisters
and doctors who claim they saw Nunu commit some of the acts he is
accused of.

Nunu has admitted to some of the allegations, but claims his
actions were not of a sexual nature and were meant to lift the suicidal
girl's spirits.

Arrest of hospital guard suspected of indecent acts remandedByRaanan Ben-ZurYNET - June 21, 2010The Kfar Saba
Magistrates' Court has remanded the arrest of Yosef Nunu until the
termination of the proceedings against him. Nunu is accused of
performing indecent acts on a suicidal 14-year old girl he was hired to
guard.
Nunu, a 70-year old resident of Herzliya, has previously served
prison sentences for murder and sexual assault.

Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child reveals that from 2001
to 2007, police opened 4 investigations into employment of sex offenders
at places that work with children, and none resulted in an indictment.

Police cannot enforce a law barring sex offenders from working with
children, Tuesday's meeting of the Knesset Committee on the Rights of
the Child revealed.

The
2001 law bars the employment of sex offenders at any institution that
works with minors or the developmentally impaired. But from 2001 to June
2007, the committee learned, police opened only four investigations
into the employment of sex offenders at schools, daycare centers and
other places that work with children, and none resulted in an
indictment.

Every
year, some 780 Israelis are convicted of sex crimes. About 200 are
sentenced to jail and another 200 to community service, the Public
Security Ministry said. Ten to 15 percent of these people commit another
sexual offense within five years of their conviction.

Aryeh
Mor, who heads the Education Ministry's security department, told the
committee a directive was sent to all educational institutes detailing
the law's requirements. In particular, he said, they were told that
every student teacher must obtain authorization from the police that he
is not a sex offender, and schools must check these authorizations. The
directive also applied to summer camps, he said, while youth movements
and local authorities have issued similar instructions.

The
police set up a computerized system to issue the authorizations. But
between 2001 and June 2007, only two of the 67,500 people who sought
permits were rejected.

Superintendent
Meir Berkovich told the MKs that police cannot spare time from their
many other urgent tasks to actively seek out employers who violate the
law, so they investigate only on tips.

Mor
said that as far as the ministry knows, not a single institution has
thus far failed to demand the requisite authorizations. But committee
chairman Zevulun Orlev (Habayit Hayehudi ) was not reassured.

"If
you haven't found even one case of an institution failing to perform
such a check of its employees, that raises questions," he said. "There's
no such thing as perfection. So if you haven't found even a single
violator, that means your supervision is flawed."

He
also criticized the police, saying, "If only four cases were opened,
and not a single indictment filed, during the law's seven and a half
years of existence, then something is very wrong with the supervision
and enforcement system."

Attorney
Meira Bassok of the Na'amat women's organization cited another problem:
Community centers, she said, are not covered by the Education
Ministry's directive, and many are not aware that they have to obtain
police authorization for their employees.

Orlev
also complained about the lack of a system to warn institutions if an
employee commits a sex offense after being hired. He proposed police set
up a system to automatically cross-check their database of offenders
with their database of people who received permits to work with
children.

One
recent high-profile case in which a convicted sex offender was found to
be working with minors despite the law occurred in April, when Yosef
Nunu - a man convicted of both murder and multiple sex offenses against
minors - was arrested for indecent assault against a suicidal
17-year-old he had been hired to care for at Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava.
He was hired by Matav, an organization that provides caregivers for
patients who need round-the-clock care. The organization subsequently
claimed that by law, it is forbidden to ask its employees for a
good-conduct certificate from the police, and therefore did not know
about Nunu's criminal past.

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Survivors ARE Heroes!

The Awareness Center believes ALL survivors of sex crimes should be given yellow ribbons to wear proudly.

Survivors of sexual violence (as adults and/or as a child) are just as deserving of a yellow ribbon as the men and women of our armed forces, who have been held captive as hostages or prisoners of war.

Survivors of sexual violence have been forced to learn how to survive, being held captive not by foreigners, but mostly by their own family members, teachers, camp counselors, coaches babysitters, rabbis, cantors or other trusted authority figures.

For these reasons ALL survivors of sexual violence should be seen as heroes!